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Fuckin space garbage is what it is.
Yes it was impressive that they landed a rocket again once, but the quantity of launches and satellites is doing nothing good for anyone. It should’ve been a stepping stone for better technology, but instead they’re just mining money. Privately owned space engineering is a disgrace to humanity.
Space engineering used to unite even the worst opponents as with the international space station, but now those institutions are underfunded, while billionaire space-musk can shoot his loads into the atmosphere without any regard to the rest of the worlds population living inside said sphere.
Tax the asshole already.
I was excited about starlink when it was announced, but already it’s way too expensive, already bows to actual totalitarians and isn’t affordable on the ocean and not available in remote places without a license.
And with more satellite constellations planned by amazon and others, it seems the kessler syndrome is just a question of time.
On the Kessler point, Starlink birds fly at an altitude where they will deorbit in 4-8 years if they go dead, so that particular orbit will always be fairly clean, and if a Kessler event does happen, the debris will deorbit in a reasonable length of time.
A portion of the debris from collisions would enter elliptical orbits though so might need more time to de-orbit. But loosing all LEO satellites and even just 4-8 years without use of LEO would be an absolute catastrophe. You could still launch satellites to medium or geosynchronous orbit though.
Where will they go after they deorbit? Do we get em back?
They burn up on re-entry, at least they’re supposed to.
Thanks, atmosphere 🙂❤️ that’s interesting design! Will any of the debris reach the planet or is it designed to break apart in a particular fashion?
Will any of the debris reach the planet
Not in a solid form. There may be some undesirable effects though at greater numbers, we don’t really have good data. Here’s a blog post by the European Space Agency talking about a couple studies on the effects of satellite reentry. Note that the satellites they simulated were significantly larger than the Starlink satellites.
My understanding is they’re designed to completely disintegrate.
And by doing so, aluminium in them is attacking the ozone layer that is already having a tough time…
Wouldn’t it be nice if those sattelites would work together instead of against eachother. What if Amazon worked together with starlink, and the other companies offering internet so there would be less sattelites in the sky. Why does every sat internet company need their own fleet of sattelites
Well presumably to make more money lol. The good thing is that there will at least be some competition to bring prices down and keep service quality up. A monopoly would be bad. But of course that leads to more satellites. This really shows how our capitalist system can’t really make rational decisions that are for the benefit of humanity. Ideally we’d have a separate economic institution to regulate industry like this under direct democratic control.
already bows to actual totalitarians
Care to elaborate?
Turkey and Russia. It’s clear that profit seeking corporations would bow, but then Elon screams bloody murder when reactionary forces in Brazil manipulating social media get censored.
I feel like that explanation is missing a verb or something.
To bow, or bow down or kneel for. But I’m not going to google that for you haha. The basic problem is that starlink theoretically has immense power so it becomes a political tool. He bows to those ones but not to legitimate democratic interests.
Especially once starlink and others can make landline based internet connections obsolete by pricing them out - which they are not currently doing though, but it seems only a matter of time with competition. Basically we could get to a situation where there are only like 2 or 3 internet provider practically controlling internet globally.
They won’t be able to price landline based connections out as long as they have to replace their satellites every 5 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re running at a loss currently.
I’m pretty sure they ran the numbers for potential profits and determined it’s a goldmine - in the long run. Maybe they’ll need to increase the lifespan of satellites. Their internal launch costs are pretty low already. Amazon wants to build it’s own constellation and is building new glen partially because they can’t get launch slots from SpaceX. I’m sure you can find some numbers to do some napkin math.
Theoretically they can serve the whole world with internet without requiring only minimal land based infrastructure. That is a gigantic market they can reach. And incredibly power to wield for such a psycho.
Another strange case is high-frequency trading on stock exchanges - because light is faster in the vacuum of space compared to fiberglass they can trade on the stock exchanges around the world like nobody else can. Not sure how much money that makes.
When I searched “Elon bows to Turkey” I got this story about Twitter censoring some tweets during the Turkish election… Is that what you’re talking about?
Yeah. Which is in stark contrast to Musk’s rhetoric in Brazil, which had a legal court order for censoring. Maybe Ukraine/Russia wasn’t the best example. My point is that it’s immense power. In the hands of a soulless corporation it’s bad enough but an outright fascist like Musk is much worse.
What about Turkey and Russia? Starlink doesn’t work in Russia.
Follow the news so we don’t have to catch you up.
Replies like this from people like you is why social media sucks. Thanks for your contribution on keeping it so.
It’s extremely affordable on the ocean. What are you talking about?
Just until recently satellite internet was really expensive. Like only large corporations could afford it. And the bandwidth was shit. Also it was barely available in the deep northern and southern hemisphere. Sure it’s considered expensive for the regular kayaking dude. But it’s insanely more available than ever before.
The dudes an asshole. But don’t invent arguments.
Yeah it’s much cheaper, but still like $250 excessively expensive compared to $50 land based starlink. For no technical reason since there is vastly less utilization on ocean. It’s price gauging because of lack of alternative and because rich cruisers can afford it. So poor people are still forced to use cell phone based internet (or starlink) only near the coast and nothing has changed. For me it’s a disappointment. Of course that is just capitalism.
Theoretically the sea could be one of the cheapest places to live if you build and maintain your own solar powered electric boat. Or use kite power. No taxes, produce your own electricity, produce your own water, incinerating toilet and emit only grey water. The one thing that is missing is cheap internet.
This. I wish I had more than one up vote I could give for this comment.
agreed. it’s a technology we need but like everything meant to improve humanity, it should be publicly owned (no, not the stock market - truly public).
Enshittification happens to all things, sadly.
It happens really early with that fuckin’ weasel in charge.
When people talk about taxing these horrible people I think of tax as being a euphamism
the quantity of launches and satellites is doing nothing good for anyone
Except for the millions of people accessing internet via Starlink to whom the alternative is either no internet, slow internet or extremely expensive internet.
starlink wouldn’t have a leg to stand on (in the US, can’t speak for elsewhere) if isps were held to installing/maintaining/upgrading infrastructure that was already paid for by the federal government decades ago and then the isps just didn’t do the work.
Privatized networks are a crime and it should be treated legally as such.
Public network for the public.
That’s a nice thought, but
- Starlink has no old infrastructure
- Rural and remote customers are difficult to wire up
Even in the best case where US was close to 100% wired up like we paid for, Starlink would have a market in remote areas world wide, RVs, aircraft, ships
The US government asked the big ISPs how much it would take to wire everyone up to high-speed Internet, then passed a bill to give them a ludicrous lump sum to do so (IIRC it was hundreds of billions). The money was split between dividends, buying up other companies, and suing the federal government for attempting to ask for the thing they’d paid for, and in the end, the government gave up. That left loads of people with no high-speed Internet, and the ISPs able to afford to buy out anyone who attempted to provide a better or cheaper service. Years down the line, once someone with silly amounts of money for a pet project and a fleet of rockets appeared, there was an opportunity for them to provide a product to underserved customers who could subsidise the genuinely impossible-to-run-a-cable-to customers.
If the US had nearly-ubiquitous high-speed terrestrial Internet, there wouldn’t have been enough demand for high-speed satellite Internet to justify making Starlink. I think this is what the other commenter was alluding to.
this is exactly what I meant
We managed to wire up large swaths of rural area for electricity back in the 1930’s
In a lot of places, that only happened because people banded together and made it happen for their area - the existing suppliers weren’t interested, even with federal loans available. That’s where the “Electric Co-op” companies came from.
Somehow capitalism has become about more profiteering, self-serving, instant gratification
But also there were no choices. Starlink may be a valid choice and the infrastructure is already there
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This, I’m both very rural and in an RV at the same time. Starlink is literally my only means of playing games. The only other even remotely viable option is LTE internet from something like T-Mobile but out here the towers don’t really have much capacity so I might be able to play the game fine and I might just start disconnecting Midway through a match randomly as the internet struggles to even load a basic web page
Welp, I guess we’ll all have to suffer the consequences so that Lordkitsuna can game in the middle of nowhere. Truly first world problems.
https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere
I’m just saying blindly calling for it to go away entirely (which i see a lot of on stuff like this) isn’t helpful. Clearly they need to tone down emissions but it’s a useful service.
I work 10hr shifts at work and it’s 1hr 30 both to and from work, moving isn’t really an option for me atm. I don’t think it’s unreasonable I’d like to be able to stream my shows or play games with my friends to relax
lordkitsuna is the answer, dude. more people getting away from the grind of the big machine to live remote lives far from society is the answer. i don’t like starlink either but these networks are crucial for the modern nomad to exist.
The answer to what? If everyone does this, there won’t be a single remote place on earth that isn’t crawling with sprinter vans. It can’t scale, and it doesn’t need to be specifically catered to. You want the wilderness, you get the wilderness. You want low latency Internet, then get to a fiber connection. We don’t need every first world amenity everywhere.
nah. you can live in the city if that’s what you like. i’ll do what i like. do you really want to alienate non-urban liberals?
depopulation is a possible alternative to preventing swarms of sprinter vans too. you really don’t want to put everyone in a city.
I’m not trying to alienate anyone, I’m trying to understand why low latency gaming needs for digital nomads is worth the real downsides of providing such a service (scientific, GHG, atmospheric tinkering, etc). I also believe that we should leave a lot more of the earth alone and that nature matters. I’m not trying to put people anywhere, just recognizing there are pros and cons to different living schemes, humans are social creatures, and population of 2 areas don’t warrant large societal investments. I’m similarly against a hypothetical drone sushi delivery service for rural Canadadian boreal forests if that happens to have real downsides too.
Does the modern nomad need to exist in the first place? Taking your money into an RV so you can guzzle gas on it, and just stream videos while you pretend to enjoy nature?
you can just exist in a remote place and not make videos too my friend. sorry that your understanding of what life outside a city looks like has been shaped by the internet instead of reality.
My rv doesn’t move, i drive a smart fortwo and get 40+MPG
I have solar on my RV and don’t use utility electrical. No propane appliances, heatpump hot water, and heat/cooling. Top rated efficiency washer and a heatpump dryer to go with it. Just because i want to be rural doesn’t mean I’m wasteful.
I’m out here because it’s the only place land is remotely affordable and I’m tired of renting. I saved up what i could, managed to get a great deal on 5 acres. And built up a sustainable rv to live in till i can build a house.
Supposedly there are plans for fiber to deploy in this area within the next 5 years. When that happens I’m all over it, i regularly go on hikes the trails out here in the mountains from old logging roads are amazing.
That doesn’t mean i shouldn’t be allowed some modern entertainment as well
Welp, I guess we all have to suffer with no internet in rural areas because of some astronomy nerds. I’ll take global, high-speed, expensive, but still affordable internet over some shots of distant nebulas any day. Not a Musk fan, but this sounds like a desperate attempt to find something to dunk on him for. There’s tons of reasons already, but this ain’t one.
Scientists doing science > tech bro nomads cosplaying as explorers but actually just playing fortnite in a van. You’re also ignoring the other downsides besides spectral emissions. Read the article I linked.
Scientists experiencing slight inconveniences while doing, let’s face it, not that important of a research < people being stranded off civilization by predatory ISP’s, if not lack of any.
For the article, the way I read it, there isn’t a problem currently, and it’s not clear whether it will pose a problem in the future, but the alarm bells have already been rung and even if it proves to be true, it doesn’t sound like something that more tech couldn’t solve - just use different materials and coating or whatever. And I don’t see how it’s specific to starlink - nobody seems to bat an eye about ozone layer when NASA does ISS resupply missions or when China is blowing up satellites on orbit.
The point of this thread is that Starlink only exists to solve this problem because the ISPs were paid to do it the old fashioned way and decided to fuck off with the cash instead. It wouldn’t have solved the RV issue, but if nost rural areas had the cable internet the government bought, then Starlink likely never gets off the ground, pun intended.
Starlink only exists to solve this problem because the ISPs were paid to do it the old fashioned way
This only applies to the US. My point is that by it’s nature it is global, and it competes with all the shitty local monopolistic ISP’s around the world. Like, I intend to do a cross-country tour around mediterranean next year, and from experience, local cell providers there can be quite a lot of hit and miss. If starlink is activated there by the time I’m all set, I’m dropping the cash, no question about it. And yeah, like @spidermanchild said, I’m just a tech bro nomad cosplaying an explorer, but there are also people actually living in those regions that have to deal with this bullshit. I know it’s unpopular opinion but I’d say a push against those local ISP’s and getting those rural people a decent internet connection is ultimately doing more good than whatever inconvenience scientists have to deal with scrubbing trails off telescope imagery and filtering out the radio interferences.
You certainly act like a Musk fan.
This thing helps my fun but hurts lot of other people’s fun, fuck em! Who cares about Kessler syndrome and pollution, I gotta game!!
I also live in a rural RV. I’ve been stuck in one and using copper wiring since 2004. I don’t have the money for Starlink, never have, never will. The upfront cost is insane. I also game on copper wires. Solo and multiplayer games, with my friends over discord.
Sending so many satellites also requires so many rocket launchers that Google passed on it because it was too polluting.
Starlink is the poster child of “fuck you, I got mine.”
Google is the second largest shareholder of Space X.
- get rid of “do no evil”
- invest in evil
- ???
- profit!
Google Ventures got a 7.5% stake in SpaceX in 2008 (which wasn’t the second-largest share at the time). Can you point me to resources that say they’re the second-largest shareholder of SpaceX today?
Don’t forget all the fun chemicals they leave in the atmosphere when they deorbit.
We’re so fucked.
In fact, increasing Earth’s albedo by pumping certain types of chemicals into the higher layers of the atmosphere has been proposed as a possible geoengineering solution that could slow down global warming.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire project was architected as a way to completely sidestep regulatory approval and test geoengineering theories before climate change really starts to pop. Elon and his fellow plutocrats are undoubtedly sociopathic enough to do that.
I think that’s how we end up in a train perpetually circling the frozen earth.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“Don’t worry, you can just build one on the moon. You can even pay me to use my rockets to get there.” - Elon
*Terms and conditions apply
**Rocket may or may not be capable of reaching low earth orbit, payload fractions subject to change, not responsible for loss of equipment, habitat, or lives
Capitalism!
Takes money. Does nothing. China builds lunar science complex with particle accelerators and all the cool shit.
It will also harm the ability to use rockets in the long time, as satellites are abandoned when decommissioned, and create debris in low earth orbit.
Starlink satellites are low enough that they’ll burn up after a few years.
To me Elon Musk is like the real-life, slightly less dramatic and slightly less evil Handsome Jack out of Borderlands
Less evil than Handsome Jack?! Jack’s at least a good guy in the Presequel. Was Elon ever good?
Good point
He certainly seemed good a decade ago. Look up how we internet folk spoke about him when he was the fun guy who wanted to explore Mars and provide electric cars, not the neonazi who ruined the internet!
Funny how he had many of us fooled. I think it was more my naivete that led me to think he was legit. For some reason I’ve kept returning to the idea that an altruistic billionaire isn’t an oxymoron 😑 as many have said and i will dutifully repeat: nobody becomes a billionaire because they’ve worked that many hours or made that giant of a contribution to the human race–they only acquire that much by withholding a significant share of the profits they’ve received from the other people that did the actual work to make the money in the first place.
I’ll never get over Handsome Jack killing Bloodwing. Fuck him.
“Kirkland brand Dr evil” has been my go to.
That’s not fair to Kirkland though, lol! They never treated us like that asshole 😛
Ugly Musk
He’s Weyland.
I thought he was X.
Bravo
I don’t know which has said wilder shit honestly.
Less?
I’m sure Musk is perfectly willing to turn certain constellations off at specific times… For a price, of course.
Exxcellent.
If it can interfere with large aperture ground telescopes… it would be a shame if those ground telescopes grew transmitters and started interfering back.
Is it weird I agree these are terrible and yet also hope this spurs the end of ground based observation in favor of a larger orbital presence?
We could and should be doing both ground and orbital radio telescope observations. One really interesting idea I’ve seen floated is to put one on the far-side of the moon; it’d be shielded from all our radio emissions but, of course, it would be somewhat suspectable to interference from the sun for weeks at a time.
What I’ve never understood about Starlink is how it’s better than existing satellite internet beamed from geosynchronous craft… like, geosync is crowded (especially over North America and Europe), but it’s not so crowded we couldn’t put a couple more transponders up there. Objects in geosync rarely have the astronomical side effects that Starlink is apparently causing. It would even solve the Starlink issue of having to have an expense af receiver with active tracking… just nail up a stationary ku-band dish that doesn’t need to move ever. This is already solved technology.
The problem with geosynchronous orbit is that you need to be at a high altitude to maintain it. That increases the packet round trip time to a receiver on the ground. Starlink satellites orbit low enough to give a theoretical 20ms ping. A geostationary satellite would be at best 500ms. It’s fine for some tasks but lousy for applications that need low latency, like video calling.
Is there any way to improve that? Or is it a hard limit due to physics?
Unfortunately it’s a hard limit due to the speed of light. Theoretically you could use quantum entanglement to get around it, but then of course you wouldn’t need the satellites anymore.
no, you couldn’t. You can’t use quantum entanglement to send information. Only random noise.
Sorry, I meant theoretically as in “at some distant point in the future where we’ve figured out how to make it work.” I probably read too much science fiction.
it physically cannot work. ever. That’s just how entanglement works. We know that much.
That’s not true either unfortunately
Science fiction quantum entanglement is not the same as real life quantum entanglement. Science fiction has spooky action at a distance, real life doesn’t.
The speed of light is the speed of causality, the speed of information. It is physically impossible to send information at speeds greater than the speed of light.
In real life, all quantum entanglement means is that you can entangle two particles, move them away from each other, and still know that when you measure one, the other will have the opposite value. It’s akin to putting a red ball in one box and a blue ball in another, then muddling them up and posting them to two addresses. When opening one box, you instantly know that because you saw a red ball, the other recipient has a blue one or vice versa, but that’s it. The extra quantum bit is just that the particles still do quantum things as if they’re a maybe-red-maybe-blue superposition until they’re measured. That’s like having a sniffer dog at the post office that flags half of all things with red paint and a quarter of all things with blue paint as needing to be diverted to the police magically redirect three eighths of each colour instead of different amounts of the two colours. The balls didn’t decide which was red and which was blue until the boxes were opened, but the choice always matches.
The geosynchronous satellites are about
65065 times higher than Starlink satellites, so the speed of light is a significant limiting factor.Geosynchronous orbit is 35,700 km (3.57 x 10^7 m) above sea level. At that distance, signals moving at the speed of light (3.0 x 10^8 m/s) take about .12 seconds to go that far. So a round trip is about .240 seconds or 240 milliseconds added to the ping.
Starlink orbits at an altitude of 550 km (5.5 x 10^5 m), where the signal can travel between ground and satellite in about 0.0018 seconds, for 3.6 millisecond round trip. Actual routing and processing of signals, especially relaying between satellites, adds time to the processing.
But no matter how much better the signal processing can get, the speed of light accounts for about a 200-230 millisecond difference at the difference in altitudes.
Thanks! That’s the shit for which I come to Lemmy. Genuinely, thank you.
I work in broadcast communications and we use geosync link ups all the time for various shit. I’m pretty sure I know more about satellite communications than a normie, but I’m blind to the intricacies of use case when it comes to stuff like this.
In the past 6 months, Starlink satellites made 50,000 collision avoidance maneuvers. They now maneuver 275 times a day to avoid crashing into other space objects.
They use an on board AI to calculate the positions, but each time they course-correct, it throws off forecasting accuracy for several days. So a collision isn’t an if, it’s a when, and suddenly we’re in Kessler Syndrome territory. Or maybe enough people will eventually wake up and realize Musk was an actual idiot all along.
But until then, great, low pings for video calls. Hurray.
This is completely factually inaccurate. 2 minutes on Google will help you learn but seeing as how you’ve been spewing crap all over this thread I don’t think it’s worth my time to even bother helping you understand.
Can you debunk it for the rest of us?
Shortest answer is that even if all Starlink satellites suddently exploded at the same time for no reason, they’d fall back to Earth in a matter of weeks. They’re waaaay lower than the other satellites you’re thinking of (see discussion on geo-stationary satellites for why), so they need to be actively pushed every few days just to stay up. They’re so low they’re still subject to atmospheric drag.
They would fall to earth in pieces? Is that an alright thing?
Search the web for “star link Kessler syndrome”. It’s well documented. It’s also discussed elsewhere in this thread.
Cite sources please?
Search the web for “starlink Kessler syndrome”. It’s very well documented. It’s also discussed elsewhere in this thread.
The scale at which we build radio telescopes on the ground simply isn’t possible in space.
Just to add, radio telescopes easily have diameters of several 10 to several 100 meters, you won’t put that easily in space. And even if you do, maybe one, not tens of them. And these are often used in network as well for interferometry to have higher spatial resolution, so that would be gone as well.
Why can’t we use the satellites for interferometry, too?
We could, but it’s way more expensive. There was a ~10m dish added to space VLBI, but the ground stations are several times larger, up to a few 100m. And you need dish size for sensitivity: in interferometry the largest distance between two telescopes gives the size of the synthetic instrument, but the size of the individual dishes fills up the detector.
Also, if something breaks it’s almost impossible to fix in space.
A couple of satellites can make a larger telescope than we could ever build on earth, and you avoid the natural interference as well as the the interference from other satellites (star link isn’t the only source of interference…).
Yes, and we are already doing that, VLBI uses dozens of telescopes, each of them larger that we could sensibly launch to space
The vlbi has dozens of 20m dishes, they have satellites with 10m diameters and Orion is thought to have 100m diameter. We’ve launched larger into space already, and the VLBI has used space telescopes to increase its size already as well.
So to claim we can’t sensibly launch any, when we have them up there already is plain wrong.
Yes, I just wrote about that above. It’s just the difference in cost between the two. How many large space observatories were there altogether? In the order of dozens maybe?
Not easily, perhaps. But it’s certainly possible. We already have space technology for unfolding small packages into large sheets. Not to mention, you don’t need a single 100m collection surface when you can accomplish similar things with many smaller surfaces spaced apart. See the Very Large Array.
Not with that attitude.
Or altitude.
It’s never been cheaper or easier to launch, ironically enough thanks in part to Starlink.
How about we check back in on your comment in say, oh, 5 years, when we become forcibly earthbound, victims of Kessler’s Syndrome? Because by then, a starlink satellite will collide with another creating a chain reaction of collisions, birthing an ever-growing cascading field of Elon’ space debris bukkake all over the Earth’s face.
But hey, Pocket Rocket Boy has got to have an excuse to keep launching so he can continue collecting his government welfare checks. $15.3 billion since 2003 and climbing.
You don’t understand Kessler Syndrome. Starlink satellites are in an orbit that requires maintenance or it decays rapidly. These orbits are used on purpose as they are “self-cleaning”.
Kessler Syndrome doesn’t even mean that we can’t fly through an orbit, only not occupy it for fear of collision. Space is incredibly, ridiculously large, and the chance of a departing rocket being struck by debris is miniscule.
In any case, a catastrophic multi-sat collision would only result in a meteor shower. These things are designed to re-enter in 5 years even in normal service.
I live in rural Canada and Starlink is the only reason I’m able to post this. It’s been a tremendous asset to our lives, and as an aerospace enthusiast I’m all on board as well. As an astronomy enthusiast I’m less impressed but forsee a push into more, larger space telescopes.
In any case, a catastrophic multi-sat collision would only result in a meteor shower
Previous collisions have resulted in debris that intersected with higher orbits. While those debris themselves will decay, if they collide with something in a higher orbit, a significant portion of the resulting debris will be there for a very long time.
Look at the apogees resulting from a major collision in 2009 in fig 3 on page 2
You shouldnt use starlink because you can’t trust the company. Thats unfortunate you can’t get other service.
Do you know why they don’t use medium earth orbit? Presumably the satellites would need more power, weigh more for more shielding and launch costs would be slightly higher. But they would also cover more area so you’d need fewer. The only real downside should be slightly more latency.
I’ve never seen an intelligent comment talking about Kessler syndrome, it’s something idiots seem to latch on to and prattle on about in the comments, until someone who has at least watched a YouTube video about it corrects them.
No it’s utterly pragmatic.
The future of space exploration is in space.
exactly what i was thinking.
Isn’t Starlink also too expensive because you have to replace the satellites every 5 years? As in you’d have to sell to basically everybody on earth to be profitable. And they charge 50Euros a month, almost twice as much as I currently pay, and I’m satisfied with my current provider.
Their target market is people who don’t have a better option, not people who already have fibre to the door.
And those people are famously wealthy.
Yes, RV travelers, cruise lines, multiple militaries.
not exactly my friend.
Its their data thats worth money. Now its collectable.
Starlink is expensive, but it’s not that expensive.
And they’re running at a loss.
it is looking like that flipped this year to over 200 million in profit off over 2 billion in revenue
I just checked Wikipedia, and there it also says small profit. Could be caused by how the satellites are being written off, though.
not exactly. many starlink users are not your grandpa in his $500k RV. it’s the digital nomad in their $5k RV held together by duct tape. some of us would do anything to get away from all the bullshit of modern society, and quite frankly i think the world needs more of us.
I was being sarcastic. I simply don’t believe that there’s enough money to be made selling satellite internet to support replacing a large constellation of satellites every 5 years. Especially since Starlink’s competitors use higher up satellites, meaning they don’t have to replace their satellites as often.
50Euros a month, almost twice as much as I current pay
Wow Canada sucks in our ISP choices
Cries in long island
I have one option that isn’t 4g wireless crap… It’s $110/month for 500mbps… It was $80/month but they felt the need to make more money by eliminating their lower tiers and “forcing” you to upgrade… I just suddenly had a 500mbps plan and $110 bill without asking them to change anything…
I’m sure they ran the numbers and saw a goldmine in the future, except goldmines pale in comparison. They can serve a global market and can grow basically to serve the entire world. Their internal launch costs will continue to get lower and satellites can be improved to last longer.
Great. Musk is building a Sophon.
Disclaimer - I have a starlink terminal. I feel that the complaints should be made to the various governments that haven’t mandated modern terrestrial technologies to those of us outside metro areas.
I live 14km/9m from a town with underground fibre optic. The best I can hope for is geo-synch satellite with data caps and latency around 600ms. I will never see fibre optic rolled out here. I can sort of understand, it’s quite expensive and needs to be balanced against income from operations to justify it. But they rolled out electricity, and they rolled out PSTN, so the justification was found in those cases.
So, Starlink found a need and filled it. Had governments filled the need instead, the problem wouldn’t exist.
The problem isn’t that they are filling a niche, the problem is that they are doing it carelessly and ruining other people’s work in the process.
While I don’t begrudge you your choice, I don’t think this is a good defence of Starlink. It sounds too close to defence of leaded gasoline.
Someone else not solving a problem isn’t a good defence for someone who creates a solution to that one problem that ends up being a net negative for humanity as a whole, and it’s definitely not a defence of a second generation that makes a known problem with the technology even worse.
Not a fan of Starlink. But net negative to humanity? Idk about that.
Let say we do lose that band of the em spectrum. Does that take away more than we gain by improving the life of the dude above and many like him?
As much as I like science and space, shouldn’t “humanity’s” first concern be the well-being of humans? I’d say we live at a time where Internet access should be a public utility, not having it marks a dramatic difference in opportunity. Starlink isn’t that, but it’s better than nothing.
Having scientists looking at space is important, but it doesn’t help everyday joe, who needs the most help.
That being said. I agree it is up to governments to find their balls and regulate the use of space. Like they did with gasoline.
There are so technological advances that have saved many, many lives thanks to our space science. Starlink doesn’t just endanger astronomical observation - it endangers other forms of space communication as well as our practical ability to put up (or use) other satellites. This means less accurate earth science too, including making it harder to predict extreme weather events, track climate change, etc. Things that save lives are being put in jeopardy.
But they rolled out electricity, and they rolled out PSTN, so the justification was found in those cases.
Yeah, the justification was the federal government basically forcing providers to do that. Remember back in 2008 when we handed a bunch of money to telecom companies to expand their networks? Then they laughed at us and just kept the money and basically said fuck you? That also was a part of this act, or at least related to it, since broadband was added to it as an amendment in 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act
Anyways, point being the companies didn’t roll our electricity and pstn to rural areas out of the goodness of their heart or even a strict profit motive. It took a literal act of congress for it to happen.
I will never see fibre optic rolled out here. I can sort of understand, it’s quite expensive and needs to be balanced against income from operations to justify it. But they rolled out electricity, and they rolled out PSTN, so the justification was found in those cases.
Yeah, but you see, the electricity and telephone rollouts were done in the New Deal era or shortly thereafter. The government has been subjected to way too much regulatory capture since then to ever consider doing something that would help the public at the expense of corporate profits nowadays.
While I don’t begrudge you your choice, I don’t think this is a good defence of Starlink. It sounds too close to defence of leaded gasoline.
Someone else not solving a problem isn’t a good defence for someone who creates a solution to that one problem that ends up being a net negative for humanity as a whole, and it’s definitely not a defence of a second generation that makes a known problem with the technology even worse.
elon musk is a terrorist that will make astronomy harder if not impossible if he trashes orbits too much
SpaceX is in the business of launching satellites. It’s in their best interest if ground-based astronomy gets harder. They should be required to pay for their negative externalities.
Hahahaha imagine if we made everyone pay for their negative externalities! It would probably be paradise.
It would certainly make it a whole lot harder to be an oil baron.
For how lauded the dude is as a visionary entrepreneur, I’m still wondering what one single thing he’s done right to earn the title with any of his businesses. Everything he touches turns to shit even when accounting for run-of-the-mill corporate practices. The dude sucks.
Fuck Leon Skum
All worth it so lord Musk can push his shitty memes to remote tribes in the Amazon.
